When the contract completed, I distilled what I learned for other newbies. The first step was learning how to configure the tool in a reproducible way. I used maven and wrote instructions that broke it down step by step. Once I had these instructions, I used them as a kata to become fully comfortable with the tool.

I held off on switching to Gradle for a long time, mostly because it was too difficult to use Robolectric inside Android Studio. Most approaches didn’t include the debugging and visual tools that the IDE gives you — which was a deal breaker.

Finally, late last year, instructions were published for getting it working in Android Studio (configuration and IDE integration). Although these instructions are a great starting point, they don’t take you all the way.

Eventually I mixed two different approaches and turned my detailed notes into the “Hello Robolectric” chapter of the Android Activity Book. The beta version of the book (already at 239 pages!) is available now. Note: You receive free updates as they are published.